Global bifurcation of homoclinic solutions of Hamiltonian systems (Q1431413)

Let us consider the following class of Hamiltonian systems: \(Jx^{\prime }( t) =\nabla H( t,x( t) ,\lambda), \) where \(x\in H^{1}( \mathbb R,\mathbb R^{N}) ,J\) is a real \(2N\times 2N\)-matrix s.t. \(J^{T}=J^{-1}=-J\) and the Hamiltonian \(H:\mathbb R\times \mathbb R^{2N}\times \mathbb R\to \mathbb R\) is sufficiently smooth. Supposing that \(x\equiv 0\) is solution for all values of the real parameter \(\lambda\), the paper under review gives a study of the existence of solutions which are homoclinic to this trivial solution in the sense that \(\lim_{t\to -\infty }x( t) =\lim_{t\to \infty }x( t) =0\). The main tool is the topological degree for proper Fredholm operators of index zero as developed by \textit{P. M. Fitzpatrick, J. Pejsachowicz} and \textit{P. J. Rabier} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 427, 1--33 (1992; Zbl 0745.47049)].